


How it Works

by waterbird13



Series: Tumblr Fics [106]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Blood, Brady is obviously not yet a demon, Burning, Cutting, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Self Harm, Stress, Support, just Sam's friend
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-08
Updated: 2016-08-08
Packaged: 2018-08-07 12:29:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7714942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waterbird13/pseuds/waterbird13
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Between school and everything else, Sam's a little stressed. A little hard on himself. And he handles it in the best way he knows how--not well at all. Thankfully, he has a good friend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How it Works

**Author's Note:**

> This is another piece from Tumblr.
> 
> Warnings: Self harm, cutting and burning, injury. Sam has poor self esteem, is stressed and has poor control over that, has bad coping mechanisms all around.

It’s hard, to do what Sam does. To be the top of his class, class after class, when the curriculum changed practically weekly for him. When hunts get in the way. When John tells him to put the books away and to focus on what really matters.

It’s hard, knowing this is his only way out and knowing it’s so incredibly far out of reach.

Every time he messes up, every time it gets a little further out of reach, he takes care of the problem. He has to. He’s learned from experiencing that letting it fester benefits no one.

So he hurts himself. Precise, neat cuts on his thighs and the meat of his biceps. Sometimes it’s burns, but usually it’s cuts. Fire and knives are both plentiful in the Winchester household, but Sam hasn’t not had a knife on him since he was about nine. No one asks why it’s in the bathroom with him.

It’s like the fuckup bleeds out with the actual blood, leaving Sam room to take a deep breath and start again. And so it goes, through high school.

And then Stanford comes, and Sam knows his position here is perhaps even more tenuous than his position in the past. One failure and he could lose his scholarship. Lose his future.

He disappoints a professor with a comically wrong answer in discussion, and doesn’t feel better until the blood is drying later that night. He gets lower marks than he anticipated on his midterm, and he goes for the matches. Best to purge things with fire, sometimes.

“What the hell, Sam?” Brady asks, examining the burns later that night, because Sam didn’t bother to cover them. No one’s noticed before. “What did you do?”

“Nothing.”

“Don’t lie.”

He’s the first person to ever ask, and somehow, that’s enough. Sam tells him.

“No,” Brady says, shaking his head. “I get it, Sam, okay, you’re life was messed up, you handled it as best you could. But this isn’t good. You don’t have to handle it alone anymore. You got me.”

“You gonna burn me instead?” Sam asks, honestly trying to puzzle out what Brady means.

Brady’s eyes get wide. “No! No, never. I’m going to talk to you, dumbass. Talk you through it. Help you out, okay? Because friends keep friends from hurting themselves. We can handle this together, Sam.”

“It doesn’t work like that,” Sam says.

“It abso-fucking-lutely does,” Brady says with absolute conviction, leaving no room for Sam not to believe him.


End file.
